


Birthday for FRIEND!!!!

by taylor_tut



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Exhaustion, Gen, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt/Comfort, Overworking, Sick Character, Sick Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sickfic, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:41:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28144764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: This was for my friend's birthday on tumblr!! Their request was just a classic lil s1 fic in which Jon, overworked and exhausted, works himself into a migraine and Martin helps him through it.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 117





	Birthday for FRIEND!!!!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voiceless_terror](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voiceless_terror/gifts).



He’s not sure he’s good enough to do this. 

That’s a thought Jon has been grappling with more and more lately. It had started small, just one of those frustrated overreactions that he’d tell himself when he sent an email saying “see attached” without including a file or when he had to spend an hour fishing through enormous stacks of paperwork just to find a single file. The first time he thought it, he’d been able to recognize that, as the same thought had plagued him when he’d started working in research, and at his job before that, and during the entire job application process, from formatting his resume to writing his cover letters. It had cropped up every time he dated someone and attempted to tell them he’d never be interested in sex, and every time he tried to bake a birthday cake for a friend, and the night before damn near every exam in Uni. It’s an annoying little voice, the part of him that wants to give himself a grade at the end of every day and can’t accept that people have to learn things before they know how to do them. It’s his biggest flaw, he knows, this impatience, the standards to which he holds both himself and others. 

He’s working on it, or, at least, he’s trying. 

But this time, he thinks, two and a half weeks into his undeserved promotion (he’d chalk that feeling up to Imposter Syndrome, but he’s heard the jokes Sasha and Tim have been making, and they’re right: she deserved this more than he did, and it’s not fair that Elias chose Jon instead), he might be right. There’s a distinct possibility he cannot do this. 

The hours he spends searching through stacks begin, slowly at first, to stretch his work hours, and he’s been finding himself engrossed in work until something pulls his focus out late in the evening and he’s hit with a wave of nauseous-hunger and a severe ache in his shoulders and neck. Following one incident in which he fell asleep on the tube trying to get home after one such long day, Jon finds a cot in one of the storage rooms (God knows why it’s there, but it’s usually better not to ask) and unfolds it, folding up his cardigan as a pillow and settling under his still rain-damp coat (he’d gotten soaked that particular morning) as a blanket. The sleep he gets that way is uncomfortable and restless, usually filled with nightmares due to the cold temperature of the storage room and the strange creaking the old building does at night, but at least it’s rest, and it keeps him going for a while. 

He finds himself waking up from naps he doesn’t remember taking. There’s this fatigue that washes over him, one that slows his thoughts and makes the base of his skull burn, and it’s making it more difficult to get through the days. Often, he needs to lie down in the middle of the day--he doesn’t even sleep, not all the time. It’s just a relief to be recumbent and to shut his eyes for a few minutes. 

Waking under a disorganized desk to several unread emails sort of makes him wonder if the naps are worth it, though. 

Eating is the next domino to fall. The lack of sleep makes him too tired to cook, and why should he worry about eating anything substantial when it won’t give him energy, anyway? If he’s only got a half hour break at most, he’d rather spend it lying on the cot than eating, since he can toss a granola bar in his mouth as he reads, anyway. Meals become snacks, and even those are often forgotten until he’s dizzy and shaky. 

Caffeine, he recognizes in hindsight, is the final precipitating factor to his minor breakdown. The reasons for drinking it are obvious enough, but Jon doesn’t like coffee, so choking it down is a chore, one which leaves him feeling more able to focus, but usually on the wrong things: he’ll make a cup of coffee to get himself through reading a statement or two, then find that an hour later, he’s labeling and organizing the stacks, statements still untouched in his office. 

Day by day, it takes its toll, leaving him feeling a little less prepared to handle the next day than the day before. It starts, innocuously enough, as a little spot of light in his vision on the tube, like he’d looked at a camera flash.

He knows he’s been looking rough, but he’d done his best today: gone home to shave, had a shower instead of a little paper towel bath in the men’s room, changed his clothes into a dress shirt and pants that weren’t wrinkled. 

So, when Sasha asks him if he’s feeling alright, logically, he knows it’s not a criticism. She’d asked the same question of Tim when he’d fallen ill at work a few weeks ago, and of Martin for… something or another; Jon can’t quite remember at the moment. He’d asked, at the time, if it were a matter in which he could be of assistance, and was told firmly no, so he’d let it be. Possibly a panic attack. Martin seemed like the anxious type, not that Jon were any expert, and he’d seemed fine later in the afternoon but didn’t want to talk about it. 

It doesn’t make it sting any less. 

“Fine,” he snaps for no reason. Why is he so irritable? He’s felt so a lot, lately, but especially now. He hopes she doesn’t notice. She does. 

“Just a question,” she admonishes, her tone gentle. “Because you look pale. And your shoes are on the wrong feet.” 

Jon buffers for a long moment, weighing his options, finally conceding when he realizes that those options are “look down to check or tell her that he’d meant to do that,” and neither makes him look better. 

“Well. I hardly see how that’s any business of yours.” Sasha frowns, standing to leave his office where she’s taken a seat because she clearly thought this would be a longer conversation. “Alright, then. God, Jon. You don’t have to be nasty about it.” He combs a hand through greying hair. 

“Right. You’re right. I’m sorry.” 

She sighs and her disappointment fills the air like mist. “Well, if you need anything, you know where to find us. And I really suggest needing something.” 

Jon wishes he could just be honest with her, tell her he’s exhausted and tired (they’re different feelings, he maintains) and overwhelmed and sad, oddly enough. It’s not that he doesn’t want to be honest with her, like he wants to push her away. 

But to complain about a job she wanted, a job she deserved, a job he’d asked Elias outright to give to her instead and had been told that his position in research was being terminated so he could either accept the promotion or begin tossing his resume out into the wild again, something he really didn’t want to do. He’d say as much if he didn’t know how much it would hurt her feelings more than just the idea that he’d wanted the job and taken it. It would be worse, after all, to lose a race to someone who hadn’t even entered it. 

He fights with his computer for the majority of the morning. Tasks that are normally easy are becoming difficult in little ways. Jon’s focus is shot--he finds himself not just losing his train of thought, but not being able to place what he’d been doing in the first place. On a normal, if frazzled, day, he might leave his office to grab a folder and forget the statement number, but today, he’s ending up standing in the hallway with no idea what he’d even left his office to do. Perhaps he should eat something, he thinks, for some energy, because he’s definitely struggling to keep his eyes open, but the thought of food turns his stomach. Not the least of his complaints, and he swears Elias has something to do with this one, the lights in his office seem to be getting brighter with every hour. By 2:00, he can no longer bear to leave them on. 

Of course, because it’s just his luck, 2:30 turns out to be when everyone in the damned Institute needs a piece of him. 

Rosie phones his office, and the high-pitched trill of the ringer makes his teeth hurt. 

Ten minutes after that, Tim knocks on his door and asks him what seems like a million questions about a statement, either not noticing or, more likely, pointedly ignoring his obvious discomfort. The conversation takes up the rest of his energy, particularly when it ends in another argument, and leaves him feeling so drained that he would ask permission to leave early if he thought he could make it back to his flat. Instead, he pops a few paracetamol and gives up on the rest of the day, opting instead to sit with his eyes buried in his sleeves, splayed across his desk. 

That’s the position in which Martin finds him fifteen minutes after Tim leaves. 

Martin rarely knocks. Jon’s never less angry for the warning, so he chooses just to come in and get the shouting over with so he can ask his question and move on. That’s his plan this time, too, when he needs more information for a follow-up, but he’s stopped by the fact that there is no light streaming through the blinds of the glass pane on Jon’s door.

“Jon?” he calls right before he pushes it open. He hadn’t thought Jon had left for the day--he’s relatively sure he’d have seen him even if he tried his best to sneak away, and he hesitates. There’s no sound, not even the shuffling of paper or the light vocalization that Jon does when he reads aloud to himself, which means he isn’t recording or reading a statement. 

He gets no reply. 

“Hey, Jon, I have a question for you. Are you in there?” 

Jon groans, but not in the exasperated, irritable way Martin is used to. “Later,” he bites, his tone strained and quiet. 

Martin just has a feeling something isn’t right. 

“What was that?” he asks, intentionally obtuse as he opens the door like he hasn’t heard. While he’s not expecting Jon to be happy about the intrusion, he certainly isn’t expecting to see him draped over his desk in the dark, his hair out of the bun he’d been wearing and tangled like he’s been pulling at it. Martin softens and shuts the door behind him. “Jon?” 

“Now’s not a good time,” he slurs through clenched teeth. 

“I can see that. What’s going on?” 

Jon tugs at his hair and conforms Martin’s suspicions. “Headache.” 

“Migraine?” Slowly, Jon nods. “When did it start?” 

Jon is quiet for a long moment, and Martin should have known he wouldn’t answer, that he isn’t close enough to Jon to ask a question so personal, that Jon hates him—

“Can’t remember,” he finally comes upon. “Th’s morning? I think?” 

Candid. That can’t be good. 

“Have you taken anything for it?” 

Jon gestures to a blister pack of paracetamol on the desk and deduces that at least he hasn’t punctured out more than four pills. That’s a good sign--the slurring words hadn’t been promising. 

“Okay. Do you think you can move? Sitting up at your desk can't be helping.”

“With some... I'm dizzy. Don't know’f I can… Walk by myself.”

“If you leaned on me?” 

Jon nods, then winces. Martin is quick and gentle getting to his side.

“Good. Easy, now; up we go. You're doing great. Let me know if—”

“Stop,” Jon cuts him off, and though he at first thinks he just wants him to shut up (which is fair, given the migraine), something about the pallor of his face and how he's clenched his jaw has Martin helping him to the waste basket just in time for him to lose the cup of tea and meds he's managed to hold down. Ignoring the pitiful sounds Jon is making, Martin keeps him steady and holds his hair back until he's finished, breathing heavily and apologizing through it. 

“It’s alright. Are you alright to walk again?” 

Slowly, quietly, and agonizingly, Martin manages to get Jon to the storage room down the hall without further incident, and even so, by the time he’s finally to the cot, he’s trembling with the effort. 

“If you tell me what you need, I can bring it for you,” Martin whispers as he helps to ease Jon’s collapse into the cot and to cover him with the blanket. 

“Just sleep,” he replies. Martin can place his bets whether that answer is truthful or not, and then double or nothing on whether the evasiveness he’s leaning toward is personal. “Remind me to thank you. Later.” 

He smiles. “You’re welcome.” 

“No, I--properly. Coherently.” 

His heart flutters in his chest, a feeling he’s not used to, as most people do not thank Martin for something like this. In fact, usually, he’s scolded for hovering and smothering. 

“I can do that,” he promises, knowing he can’t and he won’t. “I’ll let you rest for a while, but I’ll be back to check on you soon. If you need me before then, you can call.” 

When things go back to Normal, Normal feels little softer. 


End file.
